Trump Calls the Iranian Bluff

In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a new sheriff in town. Gone are the days when American presidents would cower under their desks. Gone are the days when American presidents would react to attacks against our soldiers and citizens with empty threats. Gone are the days when attacks on American embassies and consulates would produce more rhetoric and less action.

When Hezbollah attacked a marine barracks in Beirut, killing nearly 300 troops, Ronald Reagan pulled our troops out of Lebanon. He threatened harsh reprisals and did nothing.

When the Iranian regime invaded the American embassy in Tehran and took our citizens hostage, Jimmy Carter sent a helicopter to rescue them, only to see it crash and burn in the Iranian desert.

When American pilots caught sight of a convoy of Taliban officials escaping the American invasion in the early days of the Afghanistan War, American commanders consulted with lawyers-- who told them not to attack the convoy, because someone might get hurt. 

And, when terrorists attacked the American ambassador in Benghazi, Libya the Obama administration refused to send help, but denounced and jailed a man who had made a video.

When Iranians captured and humiliated American sailors in the Persian Gulf, Secretary of State John Kerry eventually thanked them for releasing the sailors unharmed.

As for the last, the Obama policy in the Middle East involved cozying up with Iran and betraying Sunni Arabs and Israel. Now, with President Trump’s swift and decisive retaliation for the Iran-instigated attack on the American embassy in Baghdad, Democratic chickenshits are cowering in the corner, fearful of the righteous might of Iran. 

If you want to know why the nation is divided against itself, look at the Democratic presidential candidates, trembling in fear, having long since abandoned even the pretense of patriotism. Nothing can stop their will to surrender to terrorism.

Qasem Soleimani had the blood of hundreds, if not thousands of Americans on his hands. The Democrats are horrified that President Trump just reduced him to ashes. I probably don't need to mention it, but if Obama had done exactly the same thing, these same Democrats would have praised him as the most courageous military leader since Alexander the Great.

Eric Nagourney got it right in the New York Times:

In July 2018, after President Trump warned Iran’s president not to threaten the United States, a rejoinder came not from the Iranian leader but from a military figure perhaps even more powerful.

“It is beneath the dignity of our president to respond to you,” Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani declared in a speech in western Iran. “I, as a soldier, respond to you.”

On Friday, General Suleimani was reported killed in an airstrike in Baghdad.

As for who he was, this man whose death strikes such fear in the hearts of cowardly Democrats, the Daily Mail summarizes:

Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed Friday in a US strike, was one of Iran's most prominent figures and a deadly adversary to America and its allies.

As the head of the Quds - or Jersualem - Force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Soleimani was officially charged with protecting the Islamic revolution, and in practice was used to enforce the regime's will across the Middle East. 

Commonly known as the second most powerful man in Iran, wielding more influence than the president, he was seen by many as a future leader. 

His CV included helping Shia militias to kill hundreds of American troops during the US invasion of Iraq,  backing Assad as he slaughtered civilians by the thousands during the Syrian civil war, and most recently overseeing the slaughter of hundreds of anti-Iran protesters in Iraq. 

In its news story, the Times reports:

General Suleimani was the architect of nearly every significant operation by Iranian intelligence and military forces over the past two decades, and his death was a staggering blow for Iran at a time of sweeping geopolitical conflict.

The strike was also a serious escalation of Mr. Trump’s growing confrontation with Tehran, one that began with the death of an American contractor in Iraq in late December.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the Twitter reaction of John Kerry’s good friend,  the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Javad Zarif:

Javad Zarif

✔

@JZarif

The US' act of international terrorism, targeting & assassinating General Soleimani—THE most effective force fighting Daesh (ISIS), Al Nusrah, Al Qaeda et al—is extremely dangerous & a foolish escalation.

The US bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism.

26K

Zarif is severely upset. He is ready to go to war... or so he says.

Democrats are severely upset. Trump’s action has shown them to be cowards. It has shown that the Obama administration policy of appeasement and submission was a calamity. But it also showed that previous administrations had manifested cowardice, not courage. In effect, Donald Trump just called the terrorist regime’s bluff. 

As opposed to chickenshit Democrats Trump was not cowed into submission by the bluster of Iranian supreme leader Khamenei. Remember when Khamenei said, a few days ago: “American can’t do a damned thing against us.”

Famous last words.

One final point: a lot of senior foreign policy experts, from both Democratic and Republican administrations have a great deal invested in the policy of feckless submission to what they considered to the awesome power of the Iranian mullahs. If these mullahs are now shown to have been bluffing, then clearly our very own foreign policy elites will have been exposed for having miscalculated. 

They, along with the chicken shit Democrats are going to be rooting for Iran to do something really, really bad… to make Trump look bad and to help them to save face.